Comment by greggman3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by greggman3 | Hacker News Reader

I'm planning to move to SF for a job. A friend told me to sign up for a neighborhood facebook group to one of the nicer neighborhoods in SF, Cole Valley, because I might see a message about a good place to rent. Cole Valley is a small neighborhood on the south east corner of Golden Gate Park.

In the 3 weeks I've been on the list 5 cars have had their windows busted and things stolen, 2 garages have been broken into and things stolen. 2 garages have had their doors damaged from attempted break-ins costing the owners hundreds to get fixed. There's been videos of people staking out places to rob (people walking from house to house inspecting garage door locks and trying to peak inside the garages). And ~10 or so posts about various other thefts or results of thefts.

This sounds more like one of those lawless 3rd world countries than a major city in a first world country. And worse, many people on the list just react as "that's life in a big city", no big deal.

It's not, having lived in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Singapore were property crime is extremely low. People get defensive whenever I bring this up, making excuses why crime needs to be high where they live. It doesn't.

Screw anecdata. Here are some statistics/resources.

SF Chronicle (an SF based newspaper) tracks break-ins in SF [0]. Here is a more general crime dashboard as well [1]. For reference, here are some statistics in Chicago [2].

YTD, SF has had 8500 property theft cases. Chicago-- 3000. Per crime capita, SF is astronomical.

Many people don't have cars in SF for this exact reason.

Other commenters are right that it varies slightly by neighborhood (e.g. cars in Russian Hill/Cole Valley are by far more touristy than others), but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

[0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/sf-car-breakins/

[1] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...

[2] https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/1_PDFsam_C...

How does violent crime compare?

Don't let the doom porn get to you. I lived in bernal for 5 years and never had a problem. Cole valley is right next to haight ashbury which attracts a fair amount characters. There's other neighborhoods that aren't in the middle of everything. Bernal heights, glen park, noe valley, pacific heights, the richmond and the sunset will be a little less crazy.

I think any American city will have some culture shock compared to Japan or Singapore. Just don't leave stuff out in the open, lock your stuff and maybe don't drive a prius, people like to steal the catalytic converters.

Perks of living on top of a giant hill.

No one wants to hike bernal to rob someone.

I thought that, but in the last 6 months living at the top of golden gate heights, the number of garage and car break ins was crazy. Felt like one a day.

They’d case the block in broad daylight. I used to leave my car unlocked so at least there’d be no broken glass. Garage door openers were getting stolen and they’d come back to those houses later to empty out the garage. Cops never turned up when called.

Anyway we moved out of SF a month ago. No chance I’m paying that rent or mortgage in a city that won’t enforce its laws. Seattle’s been awesome so far.

Wow. If you think Seattle is awesome SF must've been bad. Please come to lovely Bellevue sometime. Much cleaner and safer than Seattle.

Eh, we looked on the east side. To each their own, but it felt lacking to us. I spent a great decade in Northern New England before heading west for a career, and I'll probably end up back there one day, but I value the diversity and even a bit of the grit Seattle has. I don't live in Belltown, so I find the city to be pretty clean and safe.

This isn't a swipe at Bellevue, it's just not for us. That was probably a swipe at Belltown though :D

> Seattle’s been awesome so far.

Seattle might be headed that way with our city council. Make sure to vote.

Let's make sure SF is the example of what not to do.

In order for that to happen, SF needs to be more progressive and more restorative justice.

If this actually works, then we would love to learn that lesson.

Don't stop yelling at police, your colleagues, and city leaders. Keep yelling, so they won't prosecute petty crimes.

This is true in southwest portland as well.

I can think of like 5 different cities in Mexico that are safer than SF. Merida might top the list.

Californians should be ashamed but they continuously vote for this shit.

Are you still in SF? SF today is vastly different from 2019 SF.

I moved mid 2020 to take advantage of remote work opportunities

In bernal heights, someone smashed my window and stole my camera out of the back seat of my car while I was in the car. It was quite traumatizing, and I don't really like going to San Francisco anymore. (They knew we were in the car, but went for it anyways. Pretty brazen, and they got away with it.)

Sure the point is, people who experience these things are going to talk about and make it seem like it happens all the time. Everyone who has nothing to say is quiet so it can seem like nothing good happens

You are making it sound like it’s normal to have your car broken in, and the only difference is rate.

This is not the case. In many places, you can leave car unlocked for years, and no one is going to steal stuff from it.

Under those circumstances, even one case is a reasonable evidence that the crime situation is bad. And here we have an evidence of much more than one case.

I mean stuff gets broken into all the time. Unless your talking small town suburbs and rural areas. That doesn't seem fair to compare to a city. Your all making it sound like if you park in sf it's guaranteed your windows will be broken. It might feel like that if you only look at all the negative things people say.

And this won't be prosecuted as an armed robbery, if they even bothered to catch the perpetrator, even though it was.

> Just don't leave stuff out in the open, lock your stuff and maybe don't drive a prius, people like to steal the catalytic converters.

IME this is becoming an increasingly common attitude in many cities besides SF. And it’s a problem of social decay - fear of being considered an asshole by calling some behaviors just unacceptable. Americans are (somewhat ironically) terrified of being perceived as assholes, and we’re letting our social standards erode more and more each decade.

We don’t have to relent to this. Expecting to be able to leave something out and it not be stolen is not unreasonable. Expecting not to be assaulted is reasonable. Expecting people to not shoplift is a reasonable expectation in any civilized society.

For almost 30 years I've done that in US, suburbs and big cities.

Living near Boston I can tell you we often leave stuff outside, like a Weber grill, strollers, kid bikes and scooters, etc. If it's something expensive like my $1500 bike we do lock it even in the basement. It's been years and nothing was stolen. I know bikes are stolen in the neighborhood, but that mostly cases where people left their bikes unlocked in their yard for a while.

What I'm trying to say is that there are major US cities that are relatively safe. Fortunately not every city in the US has been following the CA politics.

Isn't "living near Boston" the key part here? You can live near sf and live in really quiet areas. Right next to sf is Daly city, pretty quiet, you can go across the bridge to Marin, near sf extremely different life style. 20 min to the south is a quiet beach town, half moon bay. You can live only near sf and have the same experience your talking about

> Just don't leave stuff out in the open, lock your stuff and maybe don't drive a prius, people like to steal the catalytic converters.

These are not things you should have to do in a sane first-world country

You'd leave an expensive laptop or camera in your car in Paris?

I wouldn't leave an expensive laptop or camera in my car in Stockholm, Sweden. I certainly wouldn't in Paris, which is way worse.

If you want more of that type of news, make sure you install these apps:

* Ring

* Nextdoor

Oh and don't forget Citizen. With that combo you'll never want to sleep again!

If the police and justice system actually worked in SF Citizen wouldn't have a market.

It's really not that bad. If you go looking for something, you are going to find it, which is exactly what you did by going to the neighborhood fb group. I've lived in potrero hill and lower Haight for over three years and only have and some packages stolen, and I lived right next to the projects when in potrero.

This "crime problem" has little to no effect on my daily life, other than needing to press a button so an attendant can unlock the shampoo cabinet when I'm at CVS every other month.

> which is exactly what you did by going to the neighborhood fb group

Is it uncommon to have a neighborhood fb group that's just full of old people posting that it looks like it might rain and people trying to offload extra rhubarb from their garden?

Neighborhood FB groups in low crime places don't have people posting about actual crime. It's usually either social stuff, or posts by Karens about random "suspicious looking" people.

I live in a very low crime area, my neighbor regularly leaves her garage door open (I guess out of convenience?) and her garage is full of extremely valuable items, nobody ever takes anything. My neighborhood FB group is almost exclusively people asking for recommendations, I've never seen a post about crime.

No, this is not more like one of those lawless third world countries. I don't understand how some people have such little life experience to make these sorts of comments.

There aren't exactly many cars to be broken into in lawless third world countries, there aren't many garages with things in them to be broken into along with said things stolen in lawless third world countries, and there aren't many garages with doors to be damaged in lawless third world countries.

Like, come on.

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